The sample on this track is dreamy and dark. Like tripping down a back alley with the Wu-Tang rapping away in your head. It took a long time for me to find my way to listening to all of this album through in spite of the rage surrounding it right after high school around bonfires and garages and basements and bonus rooms.
The quick jump right into this song sends me back into a sleepy happiness. It's such a light, frolicking tune. I can't really begin to speak on the overall meaning of this album in Dylan's career and its influence on music, but I love this song and the entire album, especially the ending (Baby Blue). Edward should really do what he did for the Beatles albums but for Bob Dylan's. Just sayin'.
This is devastatingly deep and romantic and searching, which I guess is much of what this album is. I love the stream-of-consciousness in the lyrics that is reflected in beautiful wandering of her voice. I actually came upon this song before I went through the album because of finding an incredible cover first by James Blake. I love that it's a whole case. "O Canadaaaaaaaaaaa".
Couldn't get the thought out of my head of how much Carl Athey loved this band while listening to their songs. Regardless, I can appreciate how much these guys pissed over authority and society and all the set ways of a man's existence. I love this bit, "According to a later account by Jones, both he and Cook played on instruments they had stolen". Ah to be a filthy, spitting Brit. "We're so pretty, oh so pretty, vaaaacant!"
Way too many brilliant songs on this, so I tried to go with one that I hadn't heard much if at all before going through this album. I also almost put "Caroline, No", but I love the drums and keyboard in this one that keep building and tromping along on it. It reminds me a little of this song by a modern day band, Dr. Dog, who also seems to have taken a lot from the Grateful Dead and maybe The Band. Anywho, this album is stacked with the soaring vocals of these so-called "Beach", "Boys". I almost get more of a feel like they're in a chapel rather than on surfboards, and they're boyish faces are forever preserved singing in large stained glass windows.
From the cover art to the album name to the name, "Public Enemy", this album is relentless. I love the combination of Chuck's voice, Flava's incessant chatting up the audience, and the constant shout-outs to the DJ, Terminator X. "Fellas, you think we gonna sell out?" "No!" Hip hop was so damn soulful and funky back in the 80s and early 90s, and I love how groups of rappers would just go back and forth between each other taking down a song in numbers. So good.
This album unsurprisingly took me down a trip while browsing the bios of each of the band members and the influences and others involved in this album. It was eerie, sifting through the deaths of Nico and Edie Sedgwick and then seeing the wickedly aged faces of Lou Reed and Jon Cale. Also, just trying to imagine the Warhol scene and parties and drugs and films is so impossibly foreign to me, but of course alluring like all the songs on this album. I love Nico's voice on it and in this song, and how it contrasts with Reed's trippy/heady lyrics and voice. I look forward to coming back to this one later in the future when I can let it really sink in.
Like something out of the end of Peter Pan, I did not see this song coming at all. Of course the album itself is epic and steeped in cult followings, and for good reason. Again, I'm going to come back to this and all of these many-fold, and then I'll try to come up some more to reflect on.
Hmm...I'm in Loudoun, so I can't really listen to the songs now, but I'll comment on the writing.
ReplyDeleteI've considered doing a Bob Dylan album-by-album guide, but that will be sometime in the future. I need more of his CDs. I would like to do it with him probably more than the Rolling Stones, since his body of work is just so much deeper. It would be a lot harder then the Beatles one, though. In any case, Bringing It All Back Home is Bob Dylan's first masterpiece, and definitely up there as one of my favorites, right below the greats of Highway 61 and BoB. "Love Minus Zero" is a great song with eternally inscrutable lyrics. An inscrutable title, at that. He liked having crazy song titles in this period (see "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35").
36 Chambers was popular right after high school? I did not know this. I thought the album came out in '94?
I don't know much Joni Mitchell, although Blue is definitely her most famous. It probably vies with Dylan's Blood on the Tracks as the break-up album of the '70s (Rumours could be on there too--because of all the inbreeding and breaking up of the band members; not because it's as sad as the previous two).
Ah, the Sex Pistols. I don't know this song, but I bet I can guess what it sounds like. "Anarchy in the UK" is a pretty good one.
Pet Sounds is a great album. I'm glad "Caroline, No" got a shout-out. My favorite on the record after "God Only Knows," which stands as the most perfect pop single of the 1960s after "Be My Baby." I'm still pissed off I can't find my copy of this album. I have the case but not the CD. If someone out there has this, please give it back!
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is one of the greatest album titles after. Enough said. Yes, '80s and early '90s rap (specifically before '94, with its massive collection of great hip-hop records...see above) is very FUNKY. Good word there. There is a lot less outright scariness and a lot more just funk and anger. It obviously developed from the wide and insane reach of James Brown. I was looking at Rolling Stone's list of their top 100 singers this weekend, and they put Brown at #10, above such greats as Freddie Mercury, Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison, Janis Joplin, and Jeff Buckley. What the fuck? I can understand Brown's influence (he basically fathered funk and hip-hop, and along with a few others created soul and R&B), but really, was he that great of a singer? Rolling Stone is obsessed with rating random indie-hipster albums very highly, but then when it comes time to make themselves an all-time list, they give the top ten slots to basically all black people from before 1960. White guilt much? Fucking Christ. Rolling Stone is basically the quintessential white guilt magazine. I understand Aretha and Ray and of course my favorite, Marvin Gaye, but James Brown in the top ten singers of all time? Really?! Please send me one song of him doing something other than shouting, screaming, or gasping.
I really want to get Velvet Underground & Nico. I love their prime '60s stuff, and I love a lot of Lou Reed's solo stuff. Him and John Cale are both awesome.
The White Album--what is there to say? I can't believe you chose that song, ha.
Yeah, I'd love to see a Dylan album by album (all the way to the Christmas one! Are there more now?)
ReplyDeleteAnd a bunch of people seemed to get really into Wu Tang at the end of high school or going into post-high school. Not sure why then of all times.
Blue is one of my favorites going through these. it took me a bit to get used to her singing, but it grew on me.
I don't know what happened to your Pet Sounds if you're asking me (and Bethany, the only ones that are currently reading these posts). But I'd buy you another if you want, because it's fucking Pet Sounds.
That's pretty funny about the white guilt of Rolling Stone. Nothing like writing the history books on music to make up for all the things you can't right guys?!